The invention is directed to an apparatus for receiving a transportable, card-shaped or disk-shaped data storage at the front wall of a device, by means of which the data storage can be brought into an operating position in which it is inaccessible.
Due to high storage capacity and satisfactory data security, transportable data storages, e.g. in the form of chip data cards or similarly easily manageable disk-shaped data storages with EEPROMs or buffered RAMs, are gaining increasing importance, specifically for a multitude of applications.
However, with the increasing importance of the transportable data storages and the increase in functions and valuable contents of these data carriers, the demands placed on the means serving as the receptacle for these data storages in their write and read positions within a device are also increasing. For example, when inserting such a data storage a plurality of closely adjacent contacts must be contacted without causing damage or bridging on the one hand, which requires an exact guidance and fixing of the position of the data storage, and, on the other hand, locking and tamper-proofing means are required.
For this reason, special transport carriages for inputting and releasing card-shaped or disk-shaped data storages and widely varying locking and covering means have already been suggested for protecting against unauthorized or inadmissable removal, e.g. within a determined period of time, or simply against an unintentional change in position caused by striking against a card-shaped data storage projecting out of a slot. Accordingly, known apparatuses for receiving card-shaped or disk-shaped data storages are relatively costly receptacle units which are neither universally usable nor producible in large series because of their structural design.
Such apparatuses for receiving, preferably, data cards originate from credit card operations with bank tellers, and pay telephones, as well as in automatic parking or refueling machines. They are generally constructed and assigned to the respective device in such a way that the input of a data card through a slot is effected substantially vertically relative to the front wall of the device, which decisively limits application, and a relatively large construction depth of the receptacle apparatus is accordingly required.
The collection and transfer of data in motor vehicles is an important area of use in which, in contrast to the preceding, the data storage is generally in use over a longer period of time as a data collector and/or issuer of commands and in which the construction depth for the apparatus for receiving transportable data storages is to be kept as small as possible. As an additional complication in this area of use, protective devices against manipulation and soiling are indispensable in view of the documentary value of the records in the data storages, and the space requirement is accordingly considerable.
Further problems consist in that a data storage receptacle should preferably be assigned to the respective devices for determining driving data and work time or fare, that is, should be located in the visual field of the driver, where there is a considerable shortage of space anyway due to the multitude of instruments and actuating devices. A data storage receptacle for use in the vehicle must accordingly be particularly compact and suited to the demands of large-series manufacturing applicable to the area of the vehicle devices. But this also applies to other uses, e.g. when such data storages are used in a general way for determining work time, in which case the construction depth for a suitable "attendance sheet" should be small for aesthetic reasons, or in connection with display panels, e.g. in decentralized production data collection, where such a data storage can be used either for collecting machine data or as a data carrier accompanying products.